This outreach program teams science graduate students and
faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with
general science teachers and their students at Springfield
(MA) area middle and high schools. Inquiry and project based
learning on various broad scientific topics are brought to
rural, vocational, and inner city schools. The scientists
and teachers each add their own viewpoints and expertise to
the partnership, and all take away lessons in science and
education. But the biggest winners are the students, many of
whom find new enthusiasm for science (at an age where it
usually is waning), internalize the scientific method
through investigating their own questions, and see and
experience that (as one student said to me) "we ARE
scientists!"

This project is funded by NSF grant number 0139272.

If you would like more information about this abstract, please
follow the link to http://www.umassk12.net/connections.
This link was provided by the
author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this
meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your
browser.